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Re: Messy orthography (Re: Sound change rules for erosion)

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Saturday, November 22, 2003, 2:39
Quoting JS Bangs <jaspax@...>:

> Quoting Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>: > > > And I should add that, since I have thought it through over the last 24 > > hours, I think that things get kind of messy when you want to pluralize > > a noun ending in a consonant. It might form its plural by labialization, > > or > > it might form it in -Vn. Unfortunately, you simply have to know - and > > if > > it forms its plural in -Vn, then you simply have to know which vowel. > > It > > is entirely conceivable that there could be another word <tatw> in the > > singular with the plural of <tatwon>. It could be any one of the five > > vowels. > > While this idea in itself is plausible and naturalistic (and I like it), > you might want to think about which one of the five vowels is generalized > for use on new words, and if this ending perhaps starts to replace the > others. For example, surely the five vowels didn't occur with exactly the > same frequency in the proto-lang, and the one(s) that were more common > would have survived on more plurals and come to be viewed as regular and > then spread to other words. I'm reminded of Welsh, which has had a very > similar history and so inherits a rediculously large number of plural > formations--but only one or two of those are active for neologisms.
Telenian has ended up with a similar system on a similar path. A word ending in a consonant can pluralize in -en, -an, -on, -in, or -un, in falling order of frequency, but neologisms invariably get the -en pl. The pls in -in and -un are very rare, and would likely long since had disappeared altogether without the conserving influence of a standard spelling. The few nouns ending in a vowel pluralize in -n. Andreas